1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to systems which facilitate the establishment of the identity of a specified person, and more particularly to a credit card security system for facilitating establishment of the identity of a person presenting a credit card in order to make payment for goods or services.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of credit cards, issued either by financial institutions or retail stores, is becoming increasingly widespread in today's credit economy. In the usual credit card transaction, if a person holding a credit card wishes to make payment for goods or services to a party honoring the specific credit card, the person presents the credit card to a representative of the party willing to accept payment in such a manner at the appropriate time. The accepting party then imprints information from the credit card, usually with the assistance of specially constructed devices, onto a credit card sales slip, inscribes specific purchase and price information on the slip, and requests the credit card holder to sign the slip in order to complete the transaction. A copy of the sales slip is then handed to the bearer of the credit card, together with the credit card itself, but rarely is the bearer of the credit card asked to present identification to determine whether that person is one entitled to present the specified credit card.
Although lists of credit cards which have been cancelled for various reasons, such as theft or loss, are issued periodically by the credit card companies, these lists, even if used by a party honoring cards issued by a specific company, lag behind newly stolen or lost cards, and of course cannot possibly contain information regarding credit cards whose theft or loss has not even been detected by the legitimate credit card holder. Further, although transactions involving larger amounts of money frequently are reported to the credit card company in order to obtain an "authorization" code number for the transaction, possible fraud can be detected by such a procedure only if the card has been previously reported lost or stolen.
Various proposals have been made for preventing misuse of credit cards. These proposals generally are of two kinds: those using a code and those using a removable card-part.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,184,148 and 4,445,712, issued on Jan. 15, 1980, and May 1, 1984, respectively, to E. A. Smagala-Romanoff, disclose examples of the use of a code system, wherein a credit card holder is asked at the time of presentation of the credit card to correctly identify a correct set of digits from a multiplicity of digits randomly arranged on a grid or grids presented to the card holder. The person presenting the credit card must be able to promptly determine these digits from their predetermined position on the grid or grids.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,100,689, issued July 18, 1978, to A. U. Browne, discloses a transaction or credit card having mounted thereon a code wheel provided with indicia selectively viewable through a window provided in the associated credit card. The person presenting the credit card thus must promptly position a specified indicia in the window in order to complete a coded designation of authorized use for the specific card. This approach, however, requires physical modification of credit cards themselves, a rather cumbersome, expensive, and inconvenient process.
The physical modification of the credit card also is a disadvantage to the approach of having removable parts to a credit card. In addition, the removable parts are subject to loss by the card holder because of the inconvenience of carrying the removable parts separately from the main part of the credit card. Examples of this approach can be found in prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,283,713, issued Nov. 8, 1965, to E. V. Wooster; 3,434,414, issued Mar. 25, 1969, to L. E. Wright; 3,583,317, issued June 8, 1971, to G. W. Gibson; 3,605,619, issued Sept. 20, 1971, to J. B. Gilstrap; and 3,650,210, issued Mar. 21, 1972, to F. Archer.